


The Single Rose

by greymissed



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s03e03 His Last Vow, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 02:06:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14558502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymissed/pseuds/greymissed
Summary: In the deleted scene from S03E03: His Last Vow, there was a single rose sitting in a vase in Sherlock's hospital room. Who left it there?Irene Adler / Sherlock Holmes, from Charles Augustus Magnussen's point of view.





	The Single Rose

The man known as Charles Augustus Magnussen makes his way down the corridor, gathering information with each step. Nothing escapes his notice – not the family huddled in the corner, silently mourning their loss, nor the man anxiously waiting for his lover to be wheeled out of the operating theatre, nor the fact that one of the nurses seems to have a drinking problem. All these things are noted and filed away for future reference, to be picked apart at leisure.

 

Pressure points. That is his game, his power play. He _so_ enjoys making people dance, watching them squirm under the knowledge of what he knows about them, what he can do to them, their expressions resentful, full of mute loathing-- but still they dance for him. All he has to do is snap his fingers, and be entertained.

 

And it certainly has been a most entertaining few days. While being held at gunpoint by a trained assassin was perhaps _not fun_ , nothing eventually came of that and instead the whole matter had taken on an entirely delightful and unexpected turn. New knowledge, new revelations. It is his trade, even more so than publishing, and he revels in it.

 

The man he is here to see has been frustratingly hard to pin down. At first glance, he’d appeared to be an easy target with a multitude of pressure points from which to select. But upon delving further into the nooks and crannies of his Mind Palace and examining these pressure points, Charles had been most disappointed to discover that many could no longer be used against him.

 

Irene Adler? Dead.

 

Jim Moriarty? Dead.

 

Redbeard? Dead.

 

Hound of the Baskervilles? A most engaging case, and certainly for a while it had captured the detective’s attention, but it had since been solved and was therefore no longer a pressure point.

 

Opium addiction? Fake.

 

John Watson is the only pressure point left. John Watson… the reason Sherlock Holmes is in this bind in the first place. It is easy enough, of course, to work out what had happened, why the woman who goes by the name of Mary Watson had shot him. _Her_ pressure point, of course. Also John Watson. That, and her most interesting past.

 

What is also interesting is that Sherlock Holmes has survived the shot. Charles knows for a fact that Rosamund Mary – now Mary Watson – shoots to kill, and has never missed a shot at such close proximity. The fact that the detective is still alive is so unlikely as to seem almost… calculated. He will have to examine that fact a bit more when he is back at Appledore.

 

Through the slats covering the windows facing the corridor, Charles can see that the detective has many well-wishers. The room is filled with flowers – vases line the tables and walls, spilling over with a profusion of daisies, marigolds, poinsettias, lilies, carnations and daffodils.

 

The detective himself is lying prone on the narrow hospital bed, tubes running across his bare chest, which is half-covered by a blanket. His eyes struggle open as Charles enters the room.

 

“They’re not all from me,” Charles greets unceremoniously, gesturing at the flowers. He regards a sorry-looking bunch of carnations, half-wilted and stuffed into a cheap vase. “The struggling carnations are from Scotland Yard.”

 

He stops short as a single long-stemmed blood red rose resting in an elegant crystal vase on a table at the foot of the bed catches his eye. “And the single rose is from...” He expects his mind to supply the answer, as it always does, but somehow it now struggles to locate the relevant information.

 

He walks closer to examine the rose. There is a card propped up against the vase – white, with a deep red monogrammed “W” on the lower right-hand side and an unfamiliar pattern stamped in greyscale on the upper left-hand corner. Good quality cardstock, possibly manufactured in France. “… W,” he murmurs, intrigued.

 

He feels, more than sees, the detective’s discomfort over his interest in the provenance of this gift. It is telling, and Charles is certain there is a story there. Who or what is W? Another pressure point, perhaps?

 

His mind whirrs, but remains resolutely blank. How unusual. Well, his Mind Palace is so vast it would be unfair to expect to be able to call up things at will. Deciding to let this go for the moment, he takes a mental picture of the rose and card and tucks away this piece of information, to be examined later, perhaps over a rare steak and a glass of Grand Cru.

 

He moves on. “And the black wreath – C Block, Pentonville,” he says, referring to the prison block where one of the criminals Sherlock Holmes has put behind bars resides (and will be residing for life). “I’m not sure the intent was entirely kindly.”

 

Uninvited, he takes a seat on a chair beside the detective, resting one hand on the detective’s forearm. With his other hand, he slowly begins stroking the back of the detective’s hand. The detective’s arms are pale and lightly muscled, but what Charles is really interested in are his _hands_. Charles is fascinated by hands, especially beautiful ones; his own clammy palms have always been a source of discontent.

 

The detective’s hand is ridged with veins but smooth as a baby’s bottom, a testament to his upper class upbringing. “Oh, I covet your hands, Mr Holmes; though since you’ve survived, I suppose you get to keep them.”

  
The detective tenses but otherwise refuses to acknowledge his presence. But then there’s nothing the detective can do now, can he? He’s weak as a baby, wholly dependent on the cocktail of drugs being pumped into him and the morphine circulating in his system and the goodwill of the people around him.

 

Pressure point or no, right now Sherlock Holmes is utterly powerless to resist. Vulnerable. There is something about this knowledge that is utterly delightful to Charles – this possibility for violation. He could wrap his hands around that pale throat and squeeze until the detective gasps for breath and turns blue. He could crush his long, beautiful fingers one by one.

 

But what appeals to him the most are small, seemingly insignificant acts – a flick, a touch, a caress. So minor and inconsequential but still every bit a violation in being entirely unwelcome.

 

And what Charles loves more than anything else is having people under his thumb, knowing what he can do to them should he so choose, knowing he can commit the grossest violation against them and they have no choice but to let him – he the puppeteer, and all the rest of them puppets bent to his will and fancy. And Sherlock Holmes just another one of them.

 

“Look at them.” He picks up the detective’s hand – just because he can – and carelessly removes the pulse oximeter clipped to the detective’s finger. He runs his fingers lightly over the detective’s hand, which remains limp and pliant in his other hand. He relishes the feel of the smooth, cool skin, and even more so the knot of tension that is palpable beneath the detective’s stoic acquiescence. The fact that he knows the detective wants nothing more than to tear his hand away only makes this more satisfying. “A musician’s hands,” he notes, well aware of the detective’s gift for music. “An artist’s.”

 

On impulse, he leans down and presses his mouth to the back of the detective’s hand, right where his knuckles are, inhaling as he does so. The detective’s pulse jumps beneath his fingertips at the sudden intrusion. Not a kiss, no, but a taste. After all, his business is the acquisition of knowledge, and he does this by any means available. People rely too much on their sight and hearing for observation, when the other senses often tell a more beguiling story.

 

And this story is beguiling indeed. Charles can barely hold back a grin. On the detective’s arm, mingling with the sweat and oil that naturally reside on the skin, are traces of sandalwood, vanilla and patchouli – rich, heady notes not found in any of the soaps or lotions stocked at the hospital. The faintness of the scent suggests that it was not directly sprayed on or rubbed into the detective’s skin. No – the imprint of the scent on the detective’s skin was caused by light but prolonged contact with someone else’s skin – someone who was wearing the scent or who’d rubbed it into his or her skin as a lotion. Someone holding his hand? Someone who’d held his hand to his or her pulse point, where perfume is normally sprayed? But it is quite early in the morning and Charles is the first visitor today – whoever it was must have spent the night – or at least some hours of the night – by the detective’s bedside despite the strict visiting hours. Could this “someone” be W? The detective’s pornography preference is recorded in his Mind Palace as “Normal”, which is to say heterosexual and quite vanilla. Likely to be a woman, then.

 

In the split second that he takes to straighten up, the last piece of the jigsaw slides into place and his mind forges the connection.

 

Aah. It all fits – the letter “W”, that strange patterned stamp on the card, the perfume, visiting in the middle of the night – it can only be Irene Adler, also known as The Woman. News had it that she’d been beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan, and he has her recorded as “dead” in his mental archives, but it seems after all that a revision is in order. The detective’s prime pressure point is alive, and sending him flowers. Too rash of her, though, to have used the same pattern for her stamp as the wallpaper that had previously been on her website. Without that clue, it would only have been a strong guess rather than a certainty. But now he is certain.

 

“A woman,” Charles notes with a hint of a smile, looking at the detective to gauge his reaction at his veiled but entirely deliberate reference to The Woman. He suspects the detective normally maintains ironclad control over his responses, but he isn’t exactly in the best position to do so now.

 

True enough, there is a sharp intake of breath from the detective and, for the first time since their exchange began, he resists and pulls his hand away.

 

Right, then. Irene Adler most definitely remains a pressure point for the detective. Updated information, stored away, to be wielded later. Overall, this has been a _delightful_ visit.

 

Satisfied, Charles lets it go for now, and rubs his hands together. “Apologies for the dampness of my touch,” he says without a hint of contrition. “You’ll get used to it,” he adds, making it clear that this interaction will not be a one-time occurrence.

 

“Having shot you, the woman you know as Mary Watson left without killing me,” he says conversationally as he picks up the pulse oximeter and clips it back onto the detective’s finger. “Which is odd, because that was the reason she came.”

 

He stands up and leans over the detective, bringing his mouth very close to the detective in the manner of someone whispering a secret. _“_ I didn’t pass on her identity to the police. Information like that is just too... malleable to be shared,” he says, letting the weight of his words sink in. His face is so close that his nose nearly grazes the detective, and he can hear the detective’s deepening breath. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

 

Though the detective’s eyes have remained fixed on him as he spoke about Mary Watson, they now slowly blink shut, as if he is digesting the implications of this information.

 

As Charles turns to leave the room, he catches sight of the rose from W again. The next time he threatens the detective, _that_ will be his power play.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on the deleted hospital scene in His Last Vow, where CAM visited Sherlock in hospital and came across the rose from W, but it is narrated from CAM’s POV with an Adlock slant. Credit goes to Ariane Devere for transcribing the scene; the link to the transcript can be found here:  
> https://arianedevere.dreamwidth.org/51535.html 
> 
> The list of Sherlock’s pressure points in CAM’s Mind Palace is also gleaned from Ariane Devere’s transcript for His Last Vow, the relevant portion of which can be found here: https://arianedevere.dreamwidth.org/45865.html 
> 
> Note that while I mostly followed the transcript for the deleted scene, there is a small deviation where CAM – to my mind – said “A woman”, rather than “A woman’s” as stated in the transcript. I’ve watched the clip several times and I think the audio is sufficiently unclear that it can be mistaken for CAM saying “A woman” + an intake of breath from Sherlock. Anyway, creative license and all that. Hope you’ve all enjoyed this fic!


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